several times, in an attempt to work out its meaning. In first-language
learning these heuristic processes are sometimes known as operating
principles, i.e. ways in which learners work out the meaning of utter-
ances based on what they understand about the structure of the target
language^1. For example, among the operating principles a child may
use are:
a word which ends in ingis a verb.
in a sequence of two nouns (e.g. Jane’s doll) the first noun is the
possessor and the second noun is the thing possessed.heuristic functionn
see developmental functions of language
hidden curriculumn
sometimes used to refer to implicit values or goals in a curriculum or edu-
cational system such as to impart the values and ideology of a particular
society or to socialize students into the dominant political and economic
system and the values of that system.
hierarchical chunksn
see chunking
higher educationn
also tertiary education
education beyond the level of secondary school, such as at college, poly-
technic or university.
see also further education
high frequency wordn
a word occurring frequently in a corpus of spoken or written texts. Such
words are listed in a word frequency list.
high-inference categoryn
also high-inference behaviour
(in research on teaching or other aspects of classroom behaviour) a cat-
egory of behaviour which cannot be observed directly but which has to be
inferred. For example, the fact that students are “interested in a lesson”, or
“making use of higher level thinking during a lesson” cannot be observed
directly and hence is a high-inference category of classroom behaviour. On
the other hand a category such as “asking questions during a lesson” is
easily observed and can be readily quantified (i.e. counted or measured).
It is an example of a low-inference categoryof classroom behaviour. The
distinction between high-inference and low-inference categories is an
high-inference category